Museum,—temple of the muses,—had been built by Theophrastus as the home of the Lyceum. In his will he provided that this should be maintained and beautified, that statues of the illustrious dead (particularly of Aristotle) should be completed, for which commissions had already been given to the renowned sculptor Praxiteles; further, that tablets with maps of the world engraved on them should be erected in the lower colonnade. In acknowledgment of the claims of religion, he also directed that an altar should be placed there. He devised the garden, promenade, and houses adjoining the garden to the joint control of Hipparchus, Neleus, Strato, and their successors, as a trust, enjoining that a school of philosophy should be maintained in them, and that the property should never be alienated from this purpose nor claimed as private possession. After piously making provision for certain friends and the support of faithful attendants, he further directed that he should be buried in the school garden without unnecessary expense or ceremony. [Sidenote: _The Characters_] [Sidenote: _A Fragment from a Larger Work_] [Sidenote: _Mimetic Delineations of Moral and Social Defects_] [Sidenote: _Realism_] Theophrastus is more generally known for his character sketches than for his scientific work, although his treatises on botany represented the highest attainments made by science in that field during antiquity and the Middle Ages. The treatise here translated (ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) sets forth thirty types of character striking to the Greek mind. They are probably a fragment or extract made by some epitomator from a larger treatise which was suggested by the abstract ethical analyses of Aristotle, as exhibited in the _Nicomachean Ethics_, and by the concrete dramatic representations of the New Comedy. The stage suggests the form, and Aristotle’s treatise the content. They represent moral and social defects and weaknesses, though not revolting vices, but they do this in a mimetic way by exhibiting persons as acting or speaking. Theophrastus was a contemporary of Philemon and Menander, and his life was spent in the era of the revival of comedy and the elaboration of current moral types for humorous presentation on the stage. So the characters of Theophrastus are, as it were, _dramatis personae_ of his time. He shows us how a given type of man speaks and acts; the dramatization of his characters would require scarcely anything more than stage setting. His portrayal is not satire, but imitation; not caricature, but realistic delineation from life. Moreover, this description of generic types rather than of individuals belongs to the literary fashion of his age. Looked at from this mimetic point of view, _The Characters_ of Theophrastus are historically all the more important, because our knowledge of Menander, the “tenth muse,” is so meagre, resting, as it does, upon scanty Greek fragments and a few Latin adaptations. [Sidenote: _Greek Notion of Vice_]